Cognitive science studies the mind as an
informational system. In its 60 years of
existence, it has accepted explanatory schemes
involving Grammars, algorithms and – less
precisely – concepts like Schemes, schemas and
cognitive stages. It failed properly to address
consciousness, leading to an autonomous but
related field of consciousness studies. The
latter includes insights from sensorimotor
behaviour, and from quantum mechanics as well
as information theory; the schema here would
suggest that the higher achievements of
consciousness require the kind of formation
that German psychologists like Wundt tried and
failed to systematize, and would be better
studied in another context, perhaps one willing
at times to swap the rigours of science for
those of applied experientialism.

The breaking away of cognitive and social
neuroscience has been altogether more
problematic. Very quickly, neuroscience began
to make the behaviorist mistake that gave rise
to Cognitive science as a movement in
psychology in the first place. It also
attempted a new phrenology - the mapping of
sophisticated mental attributes to locations in
the brain.

There are a few in-principle arguments that
pertain. The first was due to Chomsky and his
followers; it is that human languages evince a
systematic structure, and that this has a
certain formal complexity. Cognitive science
musts allow at least that tensors able to
handle context-free grammars are used to model
the brain. It also must eschew behaviorism as a
program to explain all, and reinstate the
algorithm as an explanatory device

The second is due to what we know about the
more remote achievements of the human mind.
Ricci flow involves a tensor of order 4;
somehow great mathematicians can handle this.
It is now absurd to suggest that the scalars
used in fmri “explanation” are in any way
adequate. In fact, no explanation of human
cognitive function can be accepted that does
not show formal capacity to handle all
achievements of human cognition, as described
formally.

So we need acquaintance with context free
grammars, with partially recursive functions,
and with the set theory that goes with them. It
is almost inevitable that we eventually will
need to understand how the metric tensor
changes in curved space in order to understand
both symbolic and sensorimotor behaviour, the
latter in animals and the former also in
biological codes like DNA uses.

Papers are invited for a special session which
addresses these issues in a manner in
conformity with academic freedom.

Inquiries and submissions for the conference
should be sent to eireannyahoo.com. Proposed papers/posters
presenters should send a 500-word abstract to
presidentuniversityofireland.com by February
7, 2014.

We already have offers to publish the
proceedings both from a peer-reviewed journal
and an academic book publisher.